The Math Vending Machine

Sometime late last spring, we found ourselves marveling at—and wondering about—the ubiquitous but often overlooked gumball machine. What math could we fit in a 2-inch capsule?

So we ordered some capsules to begin brainstorming. Ideas came quickly: Tiny tessellations! Dice for making up games! Temporary math tattoos! Pretty soon we had ordered a machine.

We took that machine to a couple of community events, where we gave one token to each child we encountered (until the machine emptied out), and it was clearly a hit. 

We talked about the Math Vending Machine as part of a presentation this past fall, where the Executive Director of the National Museum of Mathematics was in attendance. She asked if we could collaborate, and pretty soon we were filling the machine and shipping it off to New York. The Math Vending Machine is currently in the MoMath gift shop as a pilot project (no admission required). If you stop on in you can buy a token, insert it, and turn the handle. What math will be inside your capsule?

We dream of Math Vending Machines in museums and libraries, at math festivals and school math nights—free when it’s possible; low cost when it’s not. We have ideas. We love to collaborate.

If you too dream of a Math Vending Machine in your neighborhood or at your event, get in touch!
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Christopher Danielson is on the teaching faculty at Desmos, and is the author of Which One Doesn’t Belong? and How Many? published by Stenhouse and Charlesbridge.